Five of the Coalition's seven planned nuclear power stations could be turned off or run at a trickle during drought to avoid rewriting the way scarce water resources are distributed, a new report shows.
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Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announced in June 2024 plans to build seven nuclear power plants at existing coal-fired facilities at a cost of $330 billion if the Coalition won the election.
It has pledged the reactors would need no extra water beyond that already used by existing coal plants.
But a new analysis, commissioned by the Liberals Against Nuclear campaign, calls that assertion into question.
Up to 201.5 extra gigalitres of water each year would need to bought back from farmers or sourced from supplies bound for population centres to keep all seven reactors running, the Australian nuclear energy proposals, water availability and acquisition options report has found.
"Inland Australia is not a feasible location for nuclear power generation," honorary Professor Andrew Campbell at the Australian National University's Fenner School for Environment and Society said.
"Because there isn't enough water in a highly variable climate that is, on balance, mostly getting drier in southern Australia."
The Coalition hopes its seven reactors combined will have a capacity of up to 14,000 megawatts (MW), replacing the 8000MW produced by existing coal stations at those sites - and helping it achieve Australia's legislated net zero emissions by 2050 goal without relying as much on renewables.
But report author Professor Campbell, also the former chief executive of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, said there was not enough water to produce half of that.
Limited water supplies would constrain an extra 39.7 per cent of power generating capacity, his April 2025 analysis concluded.
Nuclear is 'always on'
That leaves just over 10 per cent of the planned total nuclear power capacity with no restrictions based on water supply.
The proposed plants at Port Augusta in South Australia, which is on the coast and could use seawater for cooling, and Tarong in Queensland wouldn't need to source extra water, according to the report.
"That's the whole point of nuclear power - is that it's always on," Professor Campbell said.
"For it to be always on, you've always got to have enough water.
"And when you have a drought, you don't always have enough water."
In places like Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and southern France ... they have to dial the nukes down so that they basically throttle them right back or turn them off.
- Honorary Professor Andrew Campbell
Avoiding 'meltdown'
Large amounts of water is required to drive the turbines to generate electricity, as well as to bring down the temperature at nuclear reactors to prevent "meltdown".
"You're using a fission nuclear reaction and so all the heat stays in the plant," he said.
"And you've got to absorb that and the way you absorb it is water."
Professor Campbell said most nuclear power stations around the world were built on the coast, large lakes or rivers, or in cold places to help with cooling.
"Australia doesn't have big rivers or big lakes.
"And the other thing we do have, which is highly unusual by global standards, is that our rivers - like in Queensland right now - they might be many miles wide, or they might have no water in them whatsoever," he said.
The smaller number of existing inland reactors overseas had to run at a very low ebb or be turned off during very dry periods, or when other limits were placed on water supplies, the report found.
To keep a nuclear power plant operating at a steady 90 per cent when water was scarce, allocations would have to be bought from farmers or diverted from supplies intended for population centres like Sydney or Melbourne.
"The business case for nuclear power is that it's always on. If you want it always on, you're going to have to change the water allocation regimes," Professor Campbell said.
The modelling for his report was based on the design brief for two Westinghouse AP1000 pressurised water reactors commissioned last year for Georgia's existing inland Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River in the USA.
Mr Dutton has put this type of reactor on the table for consideration.
For the report, water use was assumed to be 25 gigalitres (GL) per year with each 1100 megawatt nuclear reactor operating at 90 per cent capacity.
Produced through his consultancy Triple Helix, Professor Campbell's analysis assumed the seven reactors would have a combined capacity of 13,860MW.
The Coalition said it was still confident there would be "little difference" between the water allocated to power generation now and that used under its nuclear plans.
"Unlike Labor who want to turn our water into green hydrogen, our nuclear plan's water needs can be met through existing water licences," the Coalition spokeswoman for water, Senator Perin Davey, said in a statement.
"That is the strength of our plan. We propose to use existing power generation sites, existing infrastructure and existing water allocations to create ongoing jobs for an existing skilled workforce."
